译文 在前门廊：Deborah McCoy 和 Fresno 街舞
翻译缘由：这篇媒体文章以Fresno的黑人街舞舞者Deborah的经历和思考为线索，生动地讲述了街舞在6、70年代的发源地美国，作为一种反体制化的文化生活方式，表现出怎样的逻辑和政治性。这是非深切的insider体察无法触碰的深度。带我们看到由大众传媒和娱乐工业发现街舞的普通人无法想象的有关街舞、街头文化、街头生活、黑人经验的面向。
作者是华盛顿博塞尔大学Naomi Bragin教授。美国范围内的街舞（历史文化）是她最重要的研究兴趣。原文出处：Tropics of Meta: Historiography for the masses， APRIL 3, 2018。一切版权归属原作者。
在前门廊： Deborah McCoy 和 Fresno 街舞
On the Front Porch: Deborah McCoy and Fresno Street
译文
击打。
Fresno中央的Poplar大街。1976，或者77，78。熟悉的来自广播接收器的“震撼“打击着热夏的空气，AM dial锁定“在1220。一阵沙漠里的风起。停下。
Soul的追随者。De Arthur Woodrow Miller正向所有的听众呼唤。他们聚集在the sould of KLIP，Fresno的第一个黑人所有的电台，也是这个国家最早的之一。在面向本地人的广告之间，Mell-o Ice Cream on Tulare, Graves Upholstery on Broadway and J&C House of Records on California，旁边有和James Brown, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Ray Charles的内部对谈，Woody Miller让Fresno保持对这个社区谁发生了什么的理解——一切都以持续不断的福音音乐（Gospel）, 节奏布鲁斯（R&B）, 灵魂乐（Soul）和放克音乐（Funk）的混合交融在一起。
点缀着尖叫的笑浪滑过一片草皮， 和Poplar街上一栋在社区有名的两层房子相抱。从道上的短斜坡划过，在院子边上长的像哨兵的两棵棕榈树间蹦跳，笑声同你的双脚在你暂停下来去听的这条街上相遇。你直觉地伸手去口袋里像抚摸一个吉祥符一样摩挲着塑料磁带的一角。节奏的回响触到你的因为昨晚的练习还隐隐作痛的骨骼和肌肉。
Naomi: ...你会去自己练习吗？
Deborah: 啊是的。当然会。你会去你的房间，在关着的门后面，然后练习。观察镜子里的自己。你会练习动起来。如果你起来不知道自己如何做什么事情，你会成为这个世界、这条街的笑柄。那不是你学习做什么的时间。那是展示的时间。
你的脚在路上击打，有魔力一样。两棵棕榈树看着你经过。你踏上门廊。表演已经开始了，还有时间去上台。
Deborah: 我们的门廊挤满了住附近的孩子，这很有趣，因为我们从来不会坐在一起而不做什么。我们永远在创造。我们永远在跳舞。表演。很忙。每个人都知道来McCoy附近就必须要成为其中的一部分。很多人告诉我们他们感到被迫和被驱使。
他们紧密的集结在一起，像超级英雄一样。他们研究彼此的自我研究。他们像举盔甲一样揣着他们的舞步。刀光剑影。所有最厉害的舞者们在前门廊上出现。
跳起来！跳，起，来。
* * *
1977年，Deborah McCoy十七岁，穿得像男孩，跳得像男孩。
Deborah: 我那时很强悍很难对付。我是有史以来最顽劣的女孩。我会从你头上跳过去。我的第一个空手道比赛，打断了一个女孩的肋骨。我是唯一一个有6个兄弟的女孩。我不想做一个兄弟说什么就是什么的女孩。
她们家刚从King of Kings搬来，那是西Fresno Lee街上的一个公寓楼，在那里Deborah从Irwin中学毕业开始在在Edison的高中上学。American Union八年制学校在市镇以西15英里外的郊区Caruthers , 在那里她度过了她生命最初八年的寄养时光，她形容那儿“黑人家庭的数量可以用一只手数完”。
Deborah的故事在她叙述和家庭团圆的时候转了个急弯。大概在中学的时候，她搬回和她的父亲、母亲，以及6兄弟中最小的3人住。在这个新的社区，孩子们很胆大。Deborah带着敬意说道。
Deborah: 这是对我来说是一个“哇”的时刻。这是一个来自我自己文化的文化冲击。每个人知道每个人，我们爱这一点。在我爸家我们会走去小店买那天早上要吃的食物。当我看到一栋房子正在商店或教堂边上，我非常震惊。我来这个城市的时候，我以为我在纽约。我想，“这就是了！”最社区(hoodest) 的东西对我来说就像迪士尼乐园。
在这片土地上的新的土地，街头的语言是舞蹈，这交谈是全新的。
Deborah: 这里没有口头语言。她重复道。这里没有口头语言。这是视觉语言。这里没有术语。你唯一听到的术语是popping和locking。在街上，没有语言。这并非很有技术性和合乎规则(proper)(formality)。这里没有使用那样的东西。这只是popping, locking...而不是规范。不是那样的东西。这是街头。这是街头。
Deborah对非口语语言的强调让我想到街舞融入和离开日常生活的方式——那些逃离被编码为正式课室课程的词汇表的风格。Deborah把街当作一种学习的模式谈论，预测不断变动的方言中的术语，在日常生活不会被和艺术实践相区分的地方。
Deborah: 你问我们从哪里学习是什么意思？从街上！在街头。你开玩笑吗？我不得不这么说。你是黑人然后你去上舞蹈课？是在街头。就在这里。这对我们来说是一种解脱。没有什么像这样。没有什么像这样。没有什么。你从看其他的舞者学习，他们做了什么，你喜欢什么。他们击打(hit)的方式。
这不是一个把黑人性(blackness) 逼到成一种神秘的身体性的对街头的定义。Deborah提醒了我街头的重要性是什么——这是一种对于职业化的课程和在受保护的产业舞蹈工作室的场地中的学习所无法描述的一种学习的确认。十九世纪六七十年代的加州，舞蹈工作室几乎不把街舞舞者当成合法的艺术家。街舞是黑人文化研究，街舞舞者是哪些喜欢“无目的学习”的学生，这是一个出现在Stefano Harney和Fred Mote的书《The Undercommons》里面的措辞。“这个学生没有归属，不得其时，不得其所，没有信用，负债累累。”这里没有常规的课程课表需要参加，或者预先设定的需要达到的专业等级。街舞看起来“没有技术性”或“很自然”，因为它把技术融入到这些非正式的情境中的方式是非线性的。练习被巧妙地编织到日常状况中——通过为社区达人秀做准备的不眠夜和在前门廊狭窄空间即兴舞蹈而扩展。
Deborah: 这对我们来说是一种生活方式。每个人都会参与。人们起床然后自己跳舞(solo)。我们起来然后就跳舞。我们会跳自己的东西，其他人看。他们会加入进来。我们一起学习。
Naomi: 你们有时候编舞但是更多的时间自由式舞蹈(freestyle).
Deborah: 两种都是。我们在前门廊做很多Motown的编排。这相当于团体舞蹈。这比popping和robotting要容易很多。所有的东西都在影响。都是一起的。
这里没有起始和结尾的点，时间或空间上。练习很快就转成表演。看见你妈妈在起居室认真地做一个奇怪的律动。在邻居家的派对上被推出在众人面前。研究一个装假腿的男人在街角商店歪歪扭扭的溜达。和现在的嘻哈社交／派对舞蹈并非不同——早期的嘻哈舞蹈把黑人集体的节奏编织进台下的情境中，这补偿了通常被忽视的黑人社交场景。社会学家Marcel Mauss用“身体的技术”这个表达来描述像走路和吃东西这样的日常动作。街舞的技术通过文化传统和社会实践生产知识：“学习和实践技术发生在集体性的情境。一个形塑和影响其从事者的社会构建的情境”。
黑人研究，在这个意义上，是受惠于很多人的集体性的研究——有名的和没名的。两个Fresno的创新者，Boogaloo Sam Solomon和他的小弟弟Timothy Earl Solomon也就是Popin’ Pete，最终会环游全世界，建立Electric Boogaloo和popping风格的词汇和技术原则，塑造当今街舞的全球文化景观。然而，popping的历史极大的受惠于无数创新者的街头研究：Fresno舞者William Green Jr. 也就是 Tickn’ Will 和Ricky Darnell McDowell; 来自 Oakland的早期的舞蹈团体 (The Black Resurgents, The Black Messengers也就是Mechanical Devices); Berkeley (Damon Frost); Richmond (Richmond Robots, Audionauts, Androids, Lady Mechanical Robots, Green Machine); San Francisco (Deborah Johnson RIP with Granny and the Robotroids, Demons of the Mind, Close Encounters of the Funkiest Kind); San Jose (Playboy Rob RIP with Playboyz Inc.)。这是一个持续的名单。街舞的跨文化地域(trans-local)运动仍然，极大地，负债。
Deborah列出她受惠于她的父亲、母亲和兄弟Ken。Bob McCoy生于1922年，在十九世纪四十年代末他从得克萨斯州的Texarkana移民到了Fresno，做服务于农业和建造业的卡车司机。一个歌手和自学成才的音乐家，他在表演艺术的氛围中养育了McCoy之家。她的兄弟Ken领导了很多舞蹈团体——Soul Patrol, the Minute Men和The Puppets——Deborah加入了最后一个。他们一起让学校、教堂、本地集会和Fresno酒吧比如Rainbow Ballroom, Lucy’s, the Piccadilly Inn, the Hacienda hotel等地的舞台生辉。他们为婚礼、时装秀、家庭派对、社区中心、舞蹈比赛等编排固定的舞蹈节目——一份融合了Fresno舞蹈历史丰富模式的曲折的简历。
Mary R. Simmons McCoy是他们的母亲，坚定的支持者，会开车带他们去表演，为他们设计舞蹈服装。她的缝纫天赋在一张Ken的老照片中被捕捉到，Ken穿着一条红白相间的阔腿短裤，那是用在Shields and Maroa 街上前二手商店 Pink Elephant淘到的国旗手工做的。红色吊带裤，领结和相陪的厚边太阳镜完满了这套服装。他的手臂以奇怪的角度从扣好且挽得整整齐齐的白色礼服衬衫伸出来。他的头以一种微妙的相合状态微偏，强调着大号的红色苹果帽的活泼。
Deborah详细讲了他们家为了打磨舞蹈和表演的风格，慎重筛选调查资料。
Deborah: 我们研究了Marcel Marceau。我们看他的视频。我们把他当作一个行为榜样。我们开始看他的视频，看那些身体分离(isolations)。我们试图通过观察他来打磨这些技术。对我来说，那是舞台。我们知道，“好了，等等，我们想离舞台更近”。我们做的事情是街头。这对我们来说是生活方式。看着Marcel Marceau，他在台上，他很出名。我们非常尊敬他。我们就是这么想出The Puppets这个名字的。我们用我们的popping和robotting讲故事。当你看他，你和他一起在那个故事里面。他走过来，抓你的手，领着你跟他走。
街头和舞台形塑和影响彼此，形成一种运动的对谈，模糊了台下和台上的边界。
Deborah: 同样有趣的是，当我们在街头跳舞，我们不用Marcel Marceau或者The Sting的音乐。你必须要做得合适。做得合适意思是你必须要做在那个时候或者在那个氛围应该做的。你明白我说的吗？
Naomi: 我想是的。你在说你要说街头的语言。
Deborah: 正是。
Naomi: 你根据所在的环境转换。
Deborah: 正是。你明白了。
Naomi: 当你在街头，你回应那些那个时刻你所处地方的那些人。你用你们都分享的语言说话，因为来自这个特定的地方、这种生活方式、这个社区。
Deborah: 对的，因为那一点都不会打动他们。完全不会。所以那不是跳那种舞蹈的地方。
作为一个早期的嘻哈的形式，街舞从什么是街头、街头在哪儿、街头如何被谈论当中建立起它的政治。反对从正式的测量成绩决定的专业评鉴结果当中获得价值，街舞的黑人文化研究仍然被从“在历史有合适位置”中移出，因为从一开始，这位置未被保证。街舞，作为一种黑人研究，延续着一份无法被偿还的、无法被计数的债务。
Deborah: 我从未抛下我对家庭的感觉，那是我的成功。世界上没有什么成功能够和与我的父亲或者母亲或者兄弟们相连相比。孩童时期被迫分离？现在呢。我要去加州试试看能不能有所成？在我自己当中获得成功。那对我来说是一种提升。
2005年，Deborah 在North Blackstone和East Shields大道街角的Manchester商城二楼开了一间McCoy 达人剧场。拥有空手道和跆拳道的两个黑带，她面向年轻人和女性教授空手道，自卫，以及嘻哈。
前门廊还亮着灯...
Naomi: popping怎么样？
Deborah: popping和robotting对我来说是一种身体之外的体验。你必须要把握身体的一些部位，对另外一些部位放手。你既入又出。你必须要想，好了，如果我用手肘带动，那我就不能想着我的手掌。我必须集中在手肘上。那意味着我的手掌吊在那里好像要掉落一样。我对那手没有控制因为我集中（在其他地方）。我用手肘来带动。要能做到这样，让它看起来像真的。那样你看起来就像一个机器人。你自己消失了。当你是机器人的时候，你的眼光穿透过别人。你看透过他们。你实际上是在催眠那个你对着跳舞的人。你把他们带到你去的地方。你们一同展开一个旅程。你知道吗？你们一同展开旅程。
* * *
脚踩得坚实。
踩得更重。
把磁带拿出来换成你口袋里的那盘。
收音机响。
旋律摇摆。
一切从前门廊开始。
这个门廊一直亮着。
这是一种生活方式。
这不是历史。这是Poplar街头。
这是日常。
***
Naomi Macalalad Bragin是华盛顿博塞尔大学跨艺术和科学学院的助理教授，她在那里教授黑人表演理论，表演研究和舞蹈即兴。她当前的研究计划，Black Power of Hip Hop Dance: On Kinethic Politics，追溯了自由式街舞在黑人政治美学产生中的角色。
原文：
Hit it.
The street is Poplar, central Fresno. The year is 1976, ‘77, ‘78. The familiar popping of a broadcast receiver hits hot summer air, locking to 1220 on the AM dial. A desert wind gusts. Stops.
Sooooul Followers. De Arthur Woodrow Miller is calling to all who listen. They gather around the sound of KLIP, Fresno’s first black-owned station and one of the first in the nation. Between ads for local folks like Mell-o Ice Cream on Tulare, Graves Upholstery on Broadway and J&C House of Records on California, alongside in-house conversations with James Brown, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Ray Charles, Woody Miller keeps Fresno attuned to what and who is happening in the community—all blending together in a continuous mix of Gospel, R&B, Soul and Funk.
The wave of a laugh glittered with shouts goes gliding along a grass patch, hugging on the hood-famous two-story house at Poplar Street. Skating onto the short slope of the path, bouncing between two palm trees posted like sentries at the yard’s edge, the laugh meets your feet at the street where you pause, listening. You instinctively reach in your pocket, rubbing the plastic edge of the cassette tape like a good luck charm. Echoes of rhythm touch your bones and muscles, tender from last night’s practice.
Naomi: …you would go and practice on your own?
Deborah: Oh yeah. You sure would. You would go in your room, you would go behind closed doors, and you would practice. Watch yourself in your mirror. You would practice moving. You would be the laughing stock of the world, of the street, if you got up and you didn’t know how to do something. That wasn’t a time for you to learn how to do it. That’s show off time.
Your feet hit the path, magnetized. The two palm trees stand witness as you pass. You get up on the porch. The show’s been going on and there’s still time to get onstage.
Deborah: Our porch would be filled with kids in the neighborhood and it was very interesting because with us, there was never sitting around not doing anything. We were always creating. We were always dancing. Acting. Just really busy. And everybody knew that if you came around the McCoys you would have to be a part of it. A lot of people told us they felt compelled and driven.
They gather tight, posing like superheroes. They study each other studying themselves. They carry their moves like armor. Cutting and dipping. Flexing. All the baddest dancers show up to the front porch.
Gd UP! Gddonnup. GeddUP. Get. On. Up.
* * *
In 1977, Deborah McCoy was seventeen and dressed like the boys, danced like the boys.
Deborah: I was tough and I brought it hard. I was the baddest girl ever. I could jump over your head. My first karate tournament, I broke a girl’s ribs. I was the only girl with six brothers. I didn’t want to be the girl where the brothers say go.
Their family had just moved from King of Kings, an apartment complex on Lee Street in West Fresno where Deborah had graduated Irwin Junior High and started high school at Edison. Fifteen miles west on the town’s outskirts was American Union, the K-8 she’d attended in Caruthers during the first eight years of her life in foster care, where she says, “You could count the number of black families on one hand.”
Deborah’s story switches abruptly when she recounts reuniting with her family. Around middle school, she moved in with her father, mother, and the younger three of her six brothers. In this new community, the kids were bold. Deborah speaks with reverence.
Deborah: It was like a “wow” moment for me. It was a culture shock from my own culture. Everybody knew everybody, and we loved it. At my dad’s we’d walk to the store to get food to eat that morning. I was so shocked to see a house right next to a store, or a church! I thought I was in New York when I came to the city! I thought, “This is it!” The hoodest things were like Disneyland to me.
In this new land within a land, the language of the streets was dance and the conversation was fresh.
Deborah: There was no verbal language. She repeats. There was no verbal language. It was visual language. There was no terms. The only term you heard was popping and locking. On the street there is no language. It’s not so technical and so proper. There was none of that used. It was just poppin, lockin…no formality. None of that kind of stuff. This is street. It’s street.
Deborah’s emphasis on non-verbal language reflects to me the way Streetdance merges into and out of the everyday—style that escapes the codified vocabulary of formal studio classes. Deborah speaks to the street as a mode of study, predicated on the ever-shifting terms of the vernacular, where everyday life is not distinct from artistic practice.
Deborah: Whatchoo mean where were we learning? From the street! On the street. Are you kidding me? I have to say it like this. You’re black and you’re gona go take dance lessons? It’s on the street. It’s right there. That was a release for us. It was nothing like it. It was nothing like it. Nothing like it. You learned by watching other dancers, what they did, what you liked. The way they hit.
This isn’t a definition of the street that corners blackness into a type of mythical physicality. Deborah reminds me what’s significant about the street—it’s an affirmation of study unaccountable to professionalized lessons and learning within the protected space of industry dance studios. In 1960s and 1970s California, the studio world hardly accepted Streetdancers as legitimate artists. Streetdance is black study and Streetdancers are students who love to “study without an end,” a phrase that turns up in Stefano Harney and Fred Moten’s book The Undercommons. “The student is not home, out of time, out of place, without credit, in bad debt.” There is no regular schedule of classes to attend or pre-determined levels of expertise to achieve. Streetdance seems “non-technical” or “natural” because the method of incorporating technique in these informal contexts is not linear. Practice is stitched intimately into everyday happen-stances—extending through sleepless nights preparing for a community talent show and improvised in tight spaces of front porches.
Deborah: It was like a way of life for us. Everybody would dance. Everybody would participate. People would get up and do solos. We would get up and we would dance. We would do our thing and they would watch. They would join in. We were learning.
Naomi: Sometimes you were choreographing but a lot of times you were also freestyling.
Deborah: It was both of those. We did a lot of the Motown choreos on the front porch. It was like group dancing. That was much easier to do than the popping and the robotting. All of that was all stirred up in a pot. It was all together.
There are no starting and ending points, in time or space. Practice quickly turns to performance. Witness your mom get down to a nasty groove in the living room. Get pushed in front of the crowd at the neighbors’ house party. Study the off-balance stroll of a peg leg man at the corner store. Not unlike the hip hop social/party dances of Now—[#HITDEMFOLKS] [#NAENAE]—early hip hop dance weaves the collective rhythm of blackness into offstage contexts that make up the often overlooked black social scene. Sociologist Marcel Mauss used the expression “Techniques of the Body” to describe everyday movements like walking and eating. Streetdance technique generates knowledge through cultural tradition and social practice: “Learning and doing techniques takes place in a collective context; a context which forms and informs the social constitution of its practitioners.”
Black study, in this sense, is collective study that stays indebted to many people—named and unnamed. Two Fresno innovators, Boogaloo Sam Solomon and his younger brother Timothy Earl Solomon aka Popin’ Pete, would eventually travel around the world, building the vocabulary and technical principles of Electric Boogaloo and poppin style and shaping the global cultural landscape of contemporary Streetdance. Yet poppin history is infinitely indebted to the street study of uncountable innovators: Fresno dancers William Green Jr. aka Tickn’ Will and Ricky Darnell McDowell; early dance groups from Oakland (The Black Resurgents, The Black Messengers aka Mechanical Devices); Berkeley (Damon Frost); Richmond (Richmond Robots, Audionauts, Androids, Lady Mechanical Robots, Green Machine); San Francisco (Deborah Johnson RIP with Granny and the Robotroids, Demons of the Mind, Close Encounters of the Funkiest Kind); San Jose (Playboy Rob RIP with Playboyz Inc.). It’s a running list. The trans-local movement of Streetdance remains, richly, in debt.
Deborah lists her debt to her father, mother, and brother Ken. Bob McCoy was born in 1922 and by the late 1940s had migrated to Fresno from Texarkana, Texas, working as a truck driver in farming and construction. A singer and self-taught musician, he raised the McCoy family in performing arts. Her brother Ken led a variety of dance groups—Soul Patrol, the Minute Men and The Puppets—the last of which Deborah joined. Together, they graced stages of schools and churches, local fairs and Fresno clubs like Rainbow Ballroom, Lucy’s, the Piccadilly Inn, and the Hacienda hotel. They created routines for weddings, fashion shows, house parties, community centers, and dance competitions—a winding resumé woven with rich patterns of Fresno dance history.
Mary R. Simmons McCoy was their mother and staunch supporter, driving the family to shows and designing their dance costumes. Her sewing gifts are captured in an old photo of Ken, posing in wide-legged red and white knickers crafted from a flag found at the former Pink Elephant thrift store on Shields and Maroa Streets. Red suspenders, bow tie and matching thick-framed sunglasses complete the outfit. His arms jut at off-kilter angles from neatly folded cuffs of a button-up white dress shirt. His head tilts in subtle agreement, accentuating the jaunty perch of the oversized red Apple cap.
Deborah details the careful selection of research sources from which the family drew as they crafted their dance and performance style.
Deborah: We studied Marcel Marceau. We would watch his videos. We looked at him as a role model. We started watching his videos and watched the isolations. We tried to polish up on those skills by watching him. To me, that was onstage. We knew, “Okay, wait a minute, we want to get closer to the stage.” Doing what we were doing was street. It was a way of life for us. Seeing Marcel Marceau dance, and he was on stage, and he was famous. We had much respect for him. That’s how we came up with the name called The Puppets. We would tell stories with our popping and our robotting. When you watched [Marceau] you were there with him in that story. He just walked over to you and grabbed your hand and took you with him.
Street and stage form and inform one another, folding into movement conversations that blur boundaries between off and onstage.
Deborah: What’s interesting too, when we danced on the street, we did not use Marcel Marceau or music from The Sting. You have to come correct. Coming correct means that you gotta do what you’re supposed to do at that moment or in your atmosphere. Do you understand what I’m saying?
Naomi: I think so. You’re saying that you’re speaking the language of the street.
Deborah: Exactly.
Naomi: You switch depending on the environment you’re in.
Deborah: Exactly. You got it.
Naomi: When you’re on the street, you’re responding to the folks where you’re at in that moment. And you’re talking a common language you all share being from this particular place, this lifestyle, this community.
Deborah: Right, because that would not impress them at all. Absolutely not. So that wasn’t the place to do that kind of dancing.
As an early or emergent form of hip hop, Streetdance draws its politics from what, where and how the streets are talking. Against a move to gain value through professional accreditation determined by formal measures of achievement and success, the black study of Streetdance remains displaced in/by/from a proper sense of place in history, because its place was never guaranteed in the first place. Streetdance, as black study, sustains a debt that’s unpayable, incalculable.
Deborah: I never left…my sense of family, that’s my success. No success in the world could compare to being able to touch my father, or my mom, or my brothers. Being separated as kids? Come on now. And I’m gonna go to LA to try and make it big? Being successful within myself. That’s for me moving up.
In 2005, Deborah opened McCoy Talent Gallery on the second floor of the Manchester Mall at the corner of North Blackstone and East Shields Avenue. Holding two black belts in Shotokan and Tae Kwon Do, she teaches classes in Karate, self-defense, and hip hop to youth and women.
The front porch stays lit…
Naomi: What was it about popping?
Deborah: Popping and robotting to me is an outer body experience. You have to be in tune to some parts and let go of the other parts. You’re in and out. You have to isolate. You have to think about, okay if I’m leading with my elbow, I can’t be thinking about my hand. The focus has to be on my elbow. So that means that my hand is hanging there like it’s about to fall off. I have no control over that hand because I’m focusing. I’m leading with my elbow. To be able to do this and it seems real. That you do look like a robot. You’re gone. When you’re a robot, you’re looking right through someone. You’re looking right through them. You actually hypnotize that person that you’re dancing for. You take them where you’re going. You’re both on a journey. You know? You’re both on that journey.
* * *
Feet touch concrete.
Go harder.
Switch out the cassette for the one in your pocket.
The receiver pops.
Rhythm swings.
Everything starts on the front porch.
The porch is always lit.
It’s a way of life.
It’s not history. It’s Poplar Street.
It’s an everyday thing.
***
Naomi Macalalad Bragin is an assistant professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington Bothell, where she teaches courses in black performance theory, performance research, and dance improvisation. Her current project, Black Power of Hip Hop Dance: On Kinethic Politics, traces the role of freestyle street dance in the generation of Black political aesthetics.
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アイエム 赞了这篇日记 2024-06-06 20:28:47
